This is Accidentally On Purpose

The other day I was driving to the Waffle House (a much recommended eating venue if you ever are around one) with my buddy and bassist Neal Brantner. Good guy. Kinda crazy and off the wall sometimes--well, most of the time--but a good guy none the less. About a minute into the drive, we pass this guy on the road and Neal says, "See that? I didn't even hit him." This brought us to the discussion of driving games such as Grand Theft Auto and Driver, in which one of the main goals of the game is to run over people. "It's a good thing I don't play those too much," says Neal, "Or else I might accidentally start running over people on purpose."

I wonder. . . do I "accidentally on purpose"? Well, that depends. What is accidentally on purpose? I think accidentally on purpose occurs when something has been done on purpose so many times that it feels somewhat accidental. In essence, accidentally on purpose is equal to a habit.

According the "Unofficial Place of Awesome Knowledge and Such," otherwise known as Wikipedia, habits are "habituated routines of behavior that are repeated regularly, tend to occur subconsciously, and tend to occur without directly thinking consciously about those behaviors." The grammar student in me cringes at that sentence (structure, redundancy, use of the word itself in the definition. . .), but it gets the point across. The main word in there, I believe, is subconscious. These subconscious efforts (aka habits, aka on-purpose accidentals) take varying amounts of time to pass from "on purpose" into "accidental."

This is my prayer: God, in this time of forming habits and learning how to live, help me to live on purpose for You, and to have the discipline to live my life to the fullest, so that later in life my accidentals would be for Your glory. . . on purpose. Help my life to be driven by love and discipline, not facebook and laziness, and give me a passion unconquerable.